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NFL and Reputation – How ‘Fail Mary’ Revealed Dents in The Shield

Reputation matters to every business on the planet. That shouldn’t be clearer than after Monday night when the NFL, which had one of the most pristine, unflappable reputations for an organization in the country, was flagged by every sports fan in the country for unsportsmanlike conduct.

On the final play, on the NFL’s biggest weekly stage – Monday Night Football – temporary referees made one of the egregious errors I’ve ever seen (Full disclosure: I’m a lifelong Packer fan). This explains what’s being dubbed Fail Mary, if you missed it last night.

Could this have happened with the regular union refs? Absolutely. Have bad calls affected the game in the past? No question.

So how does this damage the NFL’s reputation, and potentially damage its bottom line? Whether Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to admit it or not, the league is driven by legal sports gambling. Whether it’s small potato fantasy football leagues or betting on the lines in Las Vegas, the NFL’s record viewership is driven by the financial stakes many have in the outcomes of the game. They took a huge risk – what we call “reputational risk” – by locking out union officials in a contract dispute and replacing them with officials from the lowest levels of college sports and leagues like the Lingerie Football League.

The officials are the ultimate arbiters of the on-the-field product. They enforce the NFL’s complex rule structure and ensure a level playing field for both teams. Fans gripe about officials in every sport. But mostly officials don’t clearly affect the outcome of the game as they did Monday night.

And they don’t affect the pocketbooks for their fans. The reason the NFL’s ratings trump all other leagues isn’t the loyalty of fans like me who tune in every week to watch their team. Its fans who watch multiple games Thursday night, Monday night and all day Sunday to see how their bets might pay off.

According to reports, as much as $250 million changed hands on a call Monday night that no one other than league officials are defending. Rightly or wrongly, all of these NFL customers are blaming the league for putting ill-equipped and underprepared officials on the field to determine the outcome. The league believes it’s protecting the long-term financial viability of its business by keeping the normal officials away from the game as they negotiate an end to a pension program and whether the officials should receive raises.

Monday night the NFL lost — big. Most of the media is right; this won’t cause fans like me to stop turning into to watch their favorite team play every week. But it might stop me from watching games involving players on my fantasy team. It’s not worth the frustration.

How about those bettors that lost $1 billion on the call Monday night? Vegas sportsbooks have already said that the replacement refs affect the way they set the betting lines. Now the NFL’s reputation has been damaged as has fans’ trust in the game. The replacement refs will now affect the bets themselves – by people holding onto their money until referee behavior is more predictable. That means less interest in the games. That means fewer viewers tuning into games. That means the sponsors paying a premium to get in front of those viewers will start calling Roger Goodell’s office wondering when this lockout will end.

Goodell is about to find out what so many other overconfident executives have found out about their companies’ untouchable reputations. They’re not untouchable.

Steve Grantz

In a strange twist, while the NFL argues in a court of law that legalized sports betting would undermine public confidence in the integrity of the NFL, it is actually quite the opposite.

It is the NFL that is undermining their own integrity, and it is the sportsbooks that are clearly indicating this by adjusting the lines.

Nick Sargent

Thanks for reading and commenting, Steve. You summed it up well.

As we help companies manage their corporate reputations, we often counsel them get ahead of issues that face public and government scrutiny before the legislature and regulatory bodies start to get involved. I wonder how long this will continue before the NFL starts facing increased scrutiny in Washington.

jim

I think we should replace the owners with new “replacement owners” No one needs these clowns, they can’t play or coach football or even find the drinking fountain. Nationally, we make a list of all NFL sponsors and fans should unite and not buy any of their products until all the ownes sell their franchises to somebody else. Except Green Bay which is community owned and should get a pass anyway.